Background: Kikuchi disease is a rare, benign, self-limited disease characterized primarily by fever and cervical lymphadenopathy. Diagnosis is based on excisional biopsy and pathologic study. We report a case of an atypical axillary lymph node enlargement.
Case report: This patient was a 12-year-old boy with clinical characteristics including axillary lymph adenopathy, fever and fatigue. He became asymptomatic after excisional biopsy. Histologic study reported necrotizing lymphadenitis without neutrophils (Kikuchi disease).
Conclusions: These findings are important for diagnosis, because of the disease rarity, clinical features (such as lymphadenopathy, prolonged fever) and unidentified etiology.